Review: Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921, by Lars Lih

Shane
Tomashot

Lih
Book Review

In
his book Bread and Authority in Russia, 1914-1921, Lars Lih focuses on
the disintegration of Russian society and the disorder of Russian bureaucracy
that contributed to the “Time of Troubles,” as he labels it, from 1914 to the
mid 1920’s. Not to be confused with
Russia’s other “Time of Troubles” (the 1605-1613 succession crisis that brought
the Romanovs to power); this era in Russian history marks the death of millions
of Russian peasants who lost their battle with starvation due to inept bureaucratic
leadership during a time of international war and internal struggle. It is Lih’s contention that the coordinating
institutions, wrapped in their own political and ideological wrangling, became
disjointed and incapable of organizing grain distribution in Russia during the
Great War and the Russian Civil War.
Authorities vacillated between two approaches, central control, taxation
and distribution (gubernatorial) or a regional hierarchical “enlistment”
approach. As no single authority
instituted a consistent form of either approach, Russia fell into the Hobbesian
tragedy of leadership. That is,
sovereign rule disintegrated as citizens came to believe that anarchy (or no
ruling authority) was more reliable than putting faith into a central sovereign
authority responsible for food distribution.

The expectation of a short war
(WWI), Lih contends, caused Russian authorities to take a casual approach to
grain distribution and transportation costs in 1914. Hence, supply problems did not occur due to
the necessity of supplying the army on Russia’s western front, but, rather from
the methods used. Government purchases
of grain entered a convoluted distribution system, involving numerous
middlemen. Although the government
needed middlemen for such a vast system, their mere existence increased prices
and hindered the movement of goods. This
led government officials to appoint regional “specialists” to oversee the process. The consequence of this action led to
continual conflict between military leaders, regional leaders and middlemen
over pricing, regional necessities, and distribution rights.

A blame game emerged in this
intricate and incomprehensible system, in which various authorities in the line
of distribution accused “unscrupulous landowners” of selling grain they did not
have, middlemen of increasing prices, and peasants of hoarding grain. Regional governors enacted embargoes to
protect their own provinces, while, simultaneously, politicians feared the
emergence of a “self-sufficient” peasantry.
Large segments of the population starved while fears of government
requisition led many peasants and land-owners to hide large stockpiles.

Lih contends that a dualism was
created out of this chaos. The rift
created between the military leadership and the masses concerned the bickering
over fixed versus market pricing of grain.
Politicians responded by creating a Special Commission, which was simply
another bureaucratic layer. In response,
“powerful actors took actions to promote their own interests which disrupted
the normal activities of everybody else” (p. 20).

Rittikh’s attempt to fix the food
distribution problem through his razverstka
(gubernatorial taxation solution) only intensified the political and economic
turmoil. A three-way struggle ignited
between bureaucratic entities: The Ministry of Internal Affairs, The Union of
Towns, and the Special Conference.
Solutions to the food distribution problem became entangled in political
battles, while political groups, vying for power, attempted to implement their
own system based on their own ideology, exacerbating the economic dualism and
starving the general population. Hence, Rittikh’s
gubernatorial solution led to further political rifts.

The War Minister’s plan to
distribute food to selected factories (workers) met opposition as well. The Special Conference argued that “the
food-supply plan should be single and completely the same for all classes of
the population” (p. 45). Rittikh struggled
with attempts to acquisition grain from the peasants out of fear of outright
rebellion. Land Captains gave up
searches of peasant and landowner holdings out of fear for their own
lives. Although Lih finds Rittikh’s
plans for alleviating the food-supply issue sincere, the plans ultimately
revived dualism and exacerbated “political and economic disruption” (p. 56).

By late 1917, the entire food-supply
crisis was a society-wide coordinating epidemic, as the transport network, the
market, and political authority were in a state of sheer and utter
failure. Any hopes of relying upon
peasant committees for equitable distribution was lost due to heavy peasant
mistrust of the government. The
peasantry itself became divided, as the south had enough grain to survive while
northern peasants starved. Officials
increasingly blamed the food supply issue on “the darkness of people,” accusing
them of greed and hoarding supplies (p. 65).
In the face of the 1917 bread run, the government could only promise
reorganization of the system. The
peasants reinstituted a commune system and resorted to violence against
landowners. Peasants, who were willing
to deliver, would deliver grain for the army only, but not for the town, mostly
out of animosity toward the working class.

The doubling of fixed grain prices
in late 1917 solidified increasing Bolshevik popularity and power vis-à-vis the
Provisional Government. More
transportation issues arose with winter.
The overall situation destroyed the morale of food authority officials
while playing into the hands of the Bolsheviks who had convinced the populous
that the government was sabotaging food relief efforts. The Provisional Government lacked real
political authority (power) and was unable to distribute food due to lack of
domestic military forces to protect shipments.

Early
1918 witnessed Bolshevik food distribution problems within Bolshevik controlled
regions as well. “Goods often ended up
in the hands of speculators masquerading as food-supply officials” (p.
135). Bolshevik soviets fell to “the
dilemma of Hobbes’s choice and the dictates of rational self-protection,” as
the Bolshevik central command continued to blame “kulaks” and other entities
for Russia’s food supply issues. The
attempted Bolshevik food-supply dictatorship also sputtered. Of course, the Bolsheviks, through their
rhetoric, would not admit that their plan had failed.

Peasant revolts of 1920-1921 led the
Bolsheviks to finally seek a method of food distribution that would pacify the
peasantry. The Bolsheviks also found
themselves in the odd position of having to support the kulak and middle
peasant class, which they had rebuked for the previous five plus years. Moreover, they increasingly turned to
Rittikh’s gubernatorial/ razverstka
system of food distribution.
Furthermore, the Bolsheviks worked to convince the peasants that the
working class was not a privileged class.
The Bolsheviks struggled against the peasant black market as well, as
peasants continued to operate in a barter economy. Meanwhile, Lenin still called for “the
exemplary punishment of a few rich peasants in each district” (p. 219).

Lih’s key points indicate that no
matter which ruling government was “in charge,” neither could establish an
ideological approach to the food-supply problem. Each entity, Bolshevik, Provisional or
Tsarist, was essentially forced into a centralist/razverstka (centrifugal) approach or an enlistment/self-help
approach. Each government entity found
its enemy to blame as well as its segment upon which to launch its propaganda
and rhetoric campaigns. The middlemen
and bureaucrats were, in a sense, the “unlikely heroes” of Lih’s analysis,
seeing that they attempted to overcome the Time of Troubles, regardless of
their private motives (p. 273).

Lih’s analysis is rich in
detail. His final chapter includes
numerous statistical tables indicating grain distribution during the Time of
Troubles. It makes one wonder how much
more information is now available concerning this time period, as Lih’s study
was published in 1990. It seems odd;
however, that Lih ends his analysis at 1921, as Russia experienced numerous
food crises throughout the latter 1920’s.
Regardless, Lih’s study is an excellent analysis of the Russian food
supply issues of the Revolutionary era.

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Shane Tomashot Bio

Shane Tomashot is a PhD candidate in history at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He taught high school history and government for eight years. His research interests include: the Inter-War era, Political Economy, Untied States foreign policy, weapons proliferation, and numerous historical topics such as the Enlightenment, Imperialism and World War II.